In the New York Times Thomas Friedman wish’s the world could remove the French as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and replace them with India:
Sometimes I wish that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council could be chosen like the starting five for the N.B.A. All-Star team – with a vote by the fans. If so, I would certainly vote France off the Council and replace it with India. Then the perm-five would be Russia, China, India, Britain and the United States. That’s more like it.
Why replace France with India? Because India is the world’s biggest democracy, the world’s largest Hindu nation and the world’s second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it’s become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can’t see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.
How the World of Order deals with the World of Disorder is the key question of the day. There is room for disagreement. There is no room for a lack of seriousness. And the whole French game on Iraq, spearheaded by its diplomacy-lite foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, lacks seriousness. Most of France’s energy is devoted to holding America back from acting alone, not holding Saddam Hussein’s feet to the fire to comply with the U.N.
Mr. de Villepin also suggested that Saddam’s government pass “legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.” (I am not making this up.) That proposal alone is a reminder of why, if America didn’t exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian.
Although the essay is in fact an attack on the French position in regards to Iraq it does beg a serious question. Why keep the Permanent members of the Security Council we currently have? What justifies their status?
The United States is a “gimme’”. The US is, far and away, the biggest baddest Mother F—-r on the block. China, not hard to answer, she is well on her way to rivaling the US in bad ass stature. Russia, a former bad ass that still possess’ a lot of really nasty weapons. England, the US lap dog. The US is so big it gets two votes, but since the rules governing the Security Council only allow for one Nation one vote the US gets a second vote by proxy, the UK. – I’m sure this pisses off any Brit’s who might be reading this, but the truth hurts. If you don’t like the situation then quit voting for sycophants. – Then we come to France.
Friedman’s question really is a good one. France is a low level nuclear power with enough economic clout to send small ripples through the world economy if it try’s really hard. France loves to play the geopolitical spoiler, but its efforts rarely come to much. So what is the justification for Frances continued presence on the Security Council? The fact that it was victimized by the German’s in WWII and not swallowed by the Soviet’s?
Friedman’s right, it may well be time for a change.